by Andre Norton
The red light overhead flashed on. The pilot looked into his visor and put his hands to the manual controls, in case of failure of the robot controls. The rocket landed smoothly, however; there was a slight jar as it was grappled by the crane and hoisted upright, the seats turning in their gimbals. Pilot and passenger unstrapped themselves and hurried through the refrigerated outlet and away from the glowing-hot rocket.
An air-taxi, emblazoned with the device of the Paratime Police, was waiting. Verkan Vail said good-by to the rocket-pilot and took his seat beside the pilot of the aircab; the latter lifted his vehicle above the building level and then set it down on the landing-stage of the Paratime Police Building in a long, side-swooping glide. An express elevator took Verkan Vail down to one of the middle stages, where he showed his sigil to the guard outside the door of Tortha Karf’s office and was admitted at once.
The Paratime Police chief rose from behind his semicircular desk, with its array of keyboards and viewing-screens and communicators. He was a big man, well past his two hundredth year; his hair was iron-gray and thinning in front, he had begun to grow thick at the waist, and his calm features bore the lines of middle age. He wore the dark-green uniform of the Paratime Police. “Well, Vail,” he greeted. “Everything secure?”
“Not exactly, sir.” Verkan Vail came around the desk, deposited his rifle and bag on the floor, and sat down in one of the spare chairs. “I’ll have to go back again.”
“So?” His chief lit a cigarette and waited.
“I traced Gavran Sarn ” Verkan Vail got out his pipe and began to fill it. “But that’s only the beginning. I have to trace something else. Gavran Sarn exceeded his Paratime permit, and took one of his pets along. A Venusian nighthound.”
Tortha Karf’s expression did not alter; it merely grew more intense. He used one of the short, semantically ugly terms which serve, in place of profanity, as the emotional release of a race that has forgotten all taboos and terminologies.
“You’re sure of this, of course.” It was less a question than a statement.
Verkan Vail bent and took cloth-wrapped objects from his bag, unwrapping them and laying them on the desk. They were casts in hard black plastic of the footprints of some large, three-toed animal. “What do these look like, sir?” he asked.
Tortha Karf fingered them and nodded. Then he became as visibly angry as a man of his civilization and culture-level ever permitted himself.
“What does that fool think we have a Paratime Code for?” he demanded. “It’s entirely illegal to transpose any extraterrestrial animal or object to any time-line on which space-travel is unknown. I don’t care if he is a green-seal thavrad; he’ll face charges, when he gets back, for this!”
“He was a green-seal thavrad,” Verkan Vail corrected. “And he won’t be coming back.”
“I hope you didn’t have to deal summarily with him,” Tortha Karf said. “With his title, and social position, and his family’s political importance, that might make difficulties. Not that it wouldn’t be all right with me, of course, but we never seem to be able to make either the Management or the public realize the extremities to which we are forced at times.” He sighed. “We probably never shall.”
Verkan Vail smiled faintly. “Oh, no, sir; nothing like that. He was dead before I transposed to that time-line. He was killed when he wrecked a self-propelled vehicle he was using. One of those Fourth Level automobiles. I posed as a relative and tried to claim his body for the burial-ceremony observed on that cultural level, but was told that it had been completely destroyed by fire when the fuel tank of this automobile burned. I was given certain of his effects which had passed through the fire; I found his sigil concealed inside what appeared to be a cigarette case.” He took a green disk from the bag and laid it on the desk. “There’s no question; Gavran Sam died in the wreck of that automobile.”
“And the nighthound?”
“It was in the car with him, but it escaped. You know how fast those things are. I found that track”—he indicated one of the black casts—“in some dried mud near the scene of the wreck. As you see, the cast is slightly defective. The others were fresh this morning, when I made them.”
“And what have you done so far?”
“I rented an old farm near the scene of the wreck, and installed my field-generator there. It runs through to the Hagraban Synthetics Works, about a hundred miles east of Thalna-Jarvizar. I have my this-line terminal at the durable plastics factory; handled that on a local police-power writ. Since then I’ve been hunting for the night-hound. I think I can find it, but I’ll need some special equipment, and a hypno-mech indoctrination. That’s why I came back.”
“Has it been attracting any attention?” Tortha Karf asked anxiously.
“Killing cattle in the locality; causing considerable excitement. Fortunately, it’s a locality of forested mountains and valley farms, rather than a built-up industrial district. Local police and wild-game protection officers are concerned; all the farmers excited, and going armed. The theory is that it’s either a wildcat of some sort, or a maniac armed with a cutlass. Either theory would conform more or less to the nature of its depredations. Nobody has actually seen it.”
“That’s good!” Tortha Karf was relieved. “Well, you’ll have to go and bring it out, or kill it and obliterate the body. You know why as well as I do.”
“Certainly, sir,” Verkan Vail replied. “In a primitive culture, things like this would be assigned supernatural explanations, and embedded in the locally accepted religion. But this culture, while nominally religious, is highly rationalistic in practice. Typical lag-effect, characteristic of all expanding cultures. And this Europo-American Sector really has an expanding culture. A hundred and fifty years ago, the inhabitants of this particular time-line didn’t even know how to apply steam power; now they’ve begun to release nuclear energy, in a few crude forms.”
Tortha Karf whistled, softly. “That’s quite a jump. There’s a sector that’ll be in for trouble in the next few centuries.”
“That is realized locally, sir.” Verkan Vail concentrated on relighting his pipe for a moment, then continued: “I would predict space-travel on that sector within the next century. Maybe the next half-century, at least to the Moon. And the art of taxidermy is very highly developed. Now, suppose some farmer shoots that thing; what would he do with it, sir?”
Tortha Karf grunted. “Nice logic, Vail. On a most uncomfortable possibility. He’d have it mounted, and it’d be put in a museum, somewhere. And as soon as the first spaceship reaches Venus, and they find those things in a wild state, they’ll have the mounted specimen identified.”
“Exactly. And then, instead of beating their brains about where their specimen came from, they’ll begin asking when it came from. They’re quite capable of such reasoning even now.”
“A hundred years isn’t a particularly long time,” Tortha Karf considered. “I’ll be retired, then, but you’ll have my job, and it’ll be your headache. You’d better get this cleaned up, now, while it can be handled. What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure, now, sir. I want a hypno-mech indoctrination, first.” Verkan Vail gestured toward the communicator on the desk. “May I?” he asked.
“Certainly.” Tortha Karf slid the instrument across the desk. “Anything you want.”
“Thank you, sir.” Verkan Vail snapped on the code-index, found the symbol he wanted, and then punched it on the keyboard. “Special Chief’s Assistant Verkan Vail,” he identified himself. “Speaking from office of Tortha Karf, Chief Paratime Police. I want a complete hypno-mech on Venusian nighthounds, emphasis on wild state, special emphasis domesticated nighthounds reverted to wild state in terrestrial surroundings, extra-special emphasis hunting techniques applicable to same. The word ‘nighthound’ will do for trigger-symbol.” He turned to Tortha Karf. “Can I take it here?”
Tortha Karf nodded, pointing to a row of booths along the far wall of the office.
“Mak
e set-up for wired transmission; I’ll take it here.”
“Very well, sir; in fifteen minutes,” a voice replied out of the communicator.
Verkan Vail slid the communicator back. “By the way, sir; I had a hitchhiker, on the way back. Carried him about a hundred or so parayears; picked him up about three hundred parayears after leaving my other-line terminal. Nasty-looking fellow, in a black uniform; looked like one of these private-army storm troopers you find all through that sector. Armed, and hostile. I thought I’d have to ray him, but he blundered outside the field almost at once. I have a record, if you’d care to see it.”
“Yes, put it on.” Tortha Karf gestured toward the solidograph-projector. “It’s set for miniature reproduction here on the desk; that be all right?”
Verkan Vail nodded, getting out the film and loading it into the projector. When he pressed a button, a dome of radiance appeared on the desk top, two feet in width and a foot in height. In the middle of this appeared a small solidograph image of the interior of the conveyor, showing the desk, and the control board, and the figure of Verkan Vail seated at it. The little figure of the storm trooper appeared, pistol in hand. The little Verkan Vail snatched up his tiny needier; the storm trooper moved into one side of the dome and vanished.
Verkan Vail flipped a switch and cut out the image.
“Yes. I don’t know what causes that, but it happens, now and then,” Tortha Karf said. “Usually at the beginning of a transposition. I remember, when I was just a kid, about a hundred and fifty years ago—a hundred and thirty-nine, to be exact—I picked up a fellow on the Fourth Level, just about where you’re operating, and dragged him a couple of hundred parayears. I went back to find him and return him to his own time-line, but before I could locate him, he’d been arrested by the local authorities as a suspicious character, and got himself shot trying to escape. I felt badly about that, but—” Tortha Karf shrugged. “Anything else happen on the trip?”
“I ran through a belt of intermittent nucleonic bombing on the Second Level.” Verkan Vail mentioned an approximate paratime location.
“Aaagh! That Khiftan civilization—by courtesy so called!” Tortha Karf pulled a wry face. “I suppose the intra-family enmities of the Hvadka Dynasty have reached critical mass again. They’ll fool around till they blast themselves back to the stone age.”
“Intellectually, they’re about there, now. I had to operate in that sector, once—Oh, yes, another thing, sir. This rifle.” Verkan Vail picked it up, emptied the magazine and handed it to his superior. “The supplies office slipped up on this; it’s not appropriate to my line of operation. It’s a lovely rifle, but it’s about two hundred percent in advance of existing arms design on my line. It excited the curiosity of a couple of police officers and a game-protector, who should be familiar with the weapons of their own time-line. I evaded by disclaiming ownership or intimate knowledge, and they seemed satisfied, but it worried me.”
“Yes. That was made in our duplicating shops, here in Dhergabar.” Tortha Karf carried it to a photographic bench, behind his desk. “I’ll have it checked, while you’re taking your hypno-mech. Want to exchange it for something authentic?”
“Why, no, sir. It’s been identified to me, and I’d excite less suspicion with it than I would if I abandoned it and mysteriously acquired another rifle. I just wanted a check, and Supplies warned to be more careful in future.”
Tortha Karf nodded approvingly. The young Mavrad of Nerros was thinking as a paratimer should.
“What’s the designation of your line, again?”
Verkan Vail told him. It was a short numerical term of six places, but it expressed a number of the order of ten to the fortieth power, exact to the last digit. Tortha Karf repeated it into his stenomemograph, with explanatory comment.
“There seems to be quite a few things going wrong, in that area,” he said. “Let’s see, now.”
He punched the designation on a keyboard; instantly, it appeared on a translucent screen in front of him. He punched another combination, and, at the top of the screen, under the number, there appeared:
EVENTS, PAST ELAPSED FIVE YEARS.
He punched again; below this line appeared the sub-heading:
EVENTS INVOLVING PARATIME TRANSPOSITION.
Another code-combination added a third line:
(ATTRACTING PUBLIC NOTICE AMONG INHABITANTS.)
He pressed the “start”-button; the headings vanished, to be replaced by page after page of print, succeeding one another on the screen as the two men read. They told strange and apparently disconnected stories—of unexplained fires and explosions; of people vanishing without trace; of unaccountable disasters to aircraft. There were many stories of an epidemic of mysterious disk-shaped objects seen in the sky, singly or in numbers. To each account was appended one or more reference-numbers. Sometimes Tortha Karf or Verkan Vail would punch one of these, and read, on an adjoining screen, the explanatory matter referred to.
Finally Tortha Karf leaned back and lit a fresh cigarette.
“Yes, indeed, Vail; very definitely we will have to take action in the matter of the runaway nighthound of the late Gavran Sarn,” he said. “I’d forgotten that that was the time-line onto which the Ardrath expedition launched those antigrav disks. If this extraterrestrial monstrosity turns up, on the heels of that ‘Flying Saucer’ business, everybody above the order of intelligence of a cretin will suspect some connection.”
“What really happened, in the Ardrath matter?” Verkan Vail inquired. “I was on the Third Level, on that Luvarian Empire operation, at the time.”
“That’s right; you missed that. Well, it was one of these joint-operation things. The Paratime Commission and the Space Patrol were experimenting with a new technique for throwing a spaceship into paratime. They used the cruiser Ardrath, Kalzam Jann commanding. Went into space about halfway to the Moon and took up orbit, keeping on the sunlit side of the planet to avoid being observed. That was all right. But then, Captain Kalzam ordered away a flight of antigrav disks, fully manned, to take pictures, and finally authorized a landing in the western mountain range, Northern Continent, Minor Land-Mass. That’s when the trouble started.”
He flipped the run-back switch, till he had recovered the page he wanted. Verkan Vail read of a Fourth Level aviator, in his little airscrew-drive craft, sighting nine high-flying saucerlike objects.
“That was how it began,” Tortha Karf told him. “Before long, as other incidents of the same sort occurred, our people on that line began sending back to know what was going on. Naturally, from the different descriptions of these ‘saucers,’ they recognized the objects as antigrav landing-disks from a spaceship. So I went to the Commission and raised atomic blazes about it, and the
Aidrath was ordered to confine operations to the lower areas of the Fifth Level. Then our people on that time-line went to work with corrective action. Here.”
He wiped the screen and then began punching combinations. Page after page appeared, bearing accounts of people who had claimed to have seen the mysterious disks, and each report was more fantastic than the last.
“The standard smother-out technique,” Verkan Vail grinned. “I only heard a little talk about the ‘Flying Saucers’, and all of that was in joke. In that order of culture, you can always discredit one true story by setting up ten others, palpably false, parallel to it—Wasn’t that the time-line the Tharmax Trading Corporation almost lost their paratime license on?”
“That’s right; it was! They bought up all the cigarettes, and caused a conspicuous shortage, after Fourth Level cigarettes had been introduced on this line and had become popular. They should have spread their purchases over a number of lines, and kept them within the local supply-demand frame. And they also got into trouble with the local government for selling unrationed petrol and automobile tires. We had to send in a special-operations group, and they came closer to having to engage in out-time local politics than I care to think of.” Tortha Karf quoted a lin
e from a currently popular song about the sorrows of a policeman’s life. “We’re jugglers, Vail; trying to keep our traders and sociological observers and tourists and plain idiots like the late Gavran Sarn out of trouble; trying to prevent panics and disturbances and dislocations of local economy as a result of our operations; trying to keep out of out-time politics—and, at all times, at all costs and hazards, by all means, guarding the secret of paratime transposition. Sometimes I wish Ghaldron Karf and Hesthor Ghrom had strangled in their cradles!”
Verkan Vail shook his head. “No, chief,” he said. “You don’t mean that; not really,” he said. “We’ve been paratiming for the past ten thousand years. When the Ghaldron-Hesthor trans-temporal field was discovered, our ancestors had pretty well exhausted the resources of this planet. We had a world population of half a billion, and it was all they could do to keep alive. After we began paratime transposition, our population climbed to ten billion, and there it stayed for the last eight thousand years. Just enough of us to enjoy our planet and the other planets of the system to the fullest; enough of everything for everybody that nobody needs fight anybody for anything. We’ve tapped the resources of those other worlds on other time-lines, a little here, a little there, and not enough to really hurt anybody. We’ve left our mark in a few places—the Dakota Badlands, and the Gobi, on the Fourth Level, for instance—but we’ve done no great damage to any of them.”